by Adam LeBor
20
Yael glanced at the SG, who was still deep in conversation. Eli’s words echoed through her head.
“We placed you.”
Was it really conceivable that, all this time, she had also been working to someone else’s agenda? That she had risked her life, faced down killers and become one herself, reached the wrong side of thirty-five still single and childless, all so her old employers could lure or force her back home and find out everything she knew? The Mossad was especially skilled in false-flag operations. Few foreigners wanted to spy for Israel, especially those based in Arab or Islamic countries, but Israel was a nation of immigrants, and the children of immigrants. Its spy services had recruits from a myriad of backgrounds, who could pretend to be agents of other countries. But a decade-long false flag, in which the target did not even know that they were an asset, took things to a whole new level.
As if this was not enough to process, there was the text message that had arrived that morning.
Fareed Hussein let your brother die.
The message had come out of the blue. Yael had no idea who sent it because the outgoing number was blocked. On one level the words were shocking. On another, they did not surprise her. Was it true? She knew that David and the other UN workers trapped in Kigali had sent a stream of increasingly desperate telegrams and messages, and made numerous phone calls, to the UN headquarters in Geneva and New York and the peacekeepers in Kigali. Fareed Hussein was then the head of the DPKO, and as such he could have ordered the peacekeepers, stationed just a few miles away, to rescue David and his colleagues. But he didn’t. The UN’s own inquiry into the disaster had vindicated Hussein personally, but found that he sat at the top of a chain of command with poor communication, blurred lines of responsibility, and unwillingness to take responsibility or decisive leadership. The inquiry made some recommendations about how the UN should respond to emergency situations. In short, a classic UN snarl-up, followed by a classic UN fudge.
The great unanswered question was: What, precisely, was the SG’s role in the catastrophe? Was it his personal decision not to intervene, or was he merely following orders? If so, whose orders? Could he have refused? Or screamed, shouted, held a press conference to demand action? Or had he worked behind the scenes, as Yael did so often, to save David and his colleagues, but been stymied by the usual mix of bureaucratic infighting?
That was twenty years ago. Little had changed at the UN. But Rwanda had altered Yael’s life, forever. She was left completely bereft by her brother’s death. Her mother, Barbara, suffered a nervous breakdown. She ended her relationship with Yael’s father and relocated to Berkeley, where she eventually moved in with her female therapist, a Hungarian called Nora. Her father had taken his own dark path, one that had eventually caused Yael to break off all ties with him.
Yael knew she was not the only one haunted by the UN’s complicity in genocide. Both Rwanda and Srebrenica hung over the Secretariat Building like giant, ghostly bloodstains. No amount of redecorating or renovation could scrub away the shame, and still the reverberations continued. Kicked out of Rwanda, the genocidaires had simply regrouped in Congo, using the UN refugee camps as bases to launch raids into Rwanda. Eventually the Hutu militias brought the whole region to the brink of another war, which was why the SG sent Yael to make a deal with Jean-Pierre Hakizimani, a mission she had protested. If he stopped the raids and dismantled his militias, he would receive a lighter sentence and a comfortable prison in Paris when he was tried by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.
But Hakizimani had known something. Something that could bring down the SG, or worse. A memory of something Hakizimani had said in that hotel room flashed into Yael’s mind.
*
Hakizimani speaks slowly and carefully: “You tell your SG this. If he starts altering the terms now, I will personally ensure that our communications during 1944 and subsequent years are leaked to the press.”
*
What were those communications? What did Hakizimani have on the SG? She had not asked Hussein. There was no point. He would just brush off her questions, deny everything. Hakizimani could not tell her about his communications with Hussein because he was dead. That much Yael knew, because she had killed him. She still did not know if his death had been her intentional revenge for David’s death, or an accident. But the end result was the same. The answer, Yael sensed, was somehow connected to the “Doomsday” sound file, implicating Fareed in a planned mass murder, that she had transferred to her phone that morning.
Yael looked again at the SG. He was still talking on the phone, ending his first conversation then starting a new one as he greeted a second person. Meanwhile, she could at least utilize the waiting time. Yael called up the Doomsday file. She inserted her earbuds, jumped back to the start, and pressed play.
FRENCH MAN: We need at least five hundred. That will have maximum impact.
HUSSEIN: No, no, that is unnecessary. It’s far too much. A couple of hundred at most would be sufficient for our purposes. Less would suffice. Even a few dozen.
AMERICAN WOMAN: We disagree, Mr. Secretary-General. Five hundred is really the absolute minimum, if this is going to work. More, ideally.
HUSSEIN: I am more and more inclined to stop the whole thing. I think—
FRENCH MAN: We understand, Mr. Secretary-General, that you have some doubts. We all do. That is only natural. Otherwise we would not be human. But you—all of us—need to think of the bigger picture. That will be our legacy—peace in Congo. Millions, not even born yet, will have the chance for a happy, productive life.
GERMAN/AUSTRIAN MAN: Yes, Mr. Secretary-General. That is what matters, surely. The bigger picture. How many people have died in the wars in Congo? Four million? Five? Nobody even knows, and, sadly, even fewer care. Now you have a chance to go down in history as the UN secretary-general who stopped the longest and bloodiest conflict since 1945. This is a small price to pay.
Thanks to Yael, the “small price,” of a massacre of five hundred people by Hakizimani’s militia, had not been paid. The American woman was Erin Rembaugh, former head of the Department of Political Affairs, who had been killed in a hit-and-run accident outside her home in Connecticut. The Frenchman was Charles Bonnet. The German or Austrian man, she thought, might be KZX communications chief Reinhardt Daintner. The recording had been sent anonymously to her last year, before the coltan scandal broke, and it had not yet been made public. Nor had Yael mentioned the sound file to anyone, though lately she had been hearing increasing rumors about its existence, which meant that other people knew about it.
Yael slipped her phone into her purse. Her glance fell on the SG’s desk. There were two framed pictures there, she knew. One of Omar, and another that showed a pretty young Indian woman in her graduation gown: Rina, the SG’s estranged daughter and one of Yael’s rare failures. She was a human rights activist who spent much of her time denouncing her father as “an accomplice to genocide.” Hussein had asked Yael to befriend his daughter and then gently raise the topic of a reconciliation, so she had met with Rina several times. This was one assignment Yael felt no ambiguity about: reconciling a daughter with her father was a straightforward good thing. It also made Yael wonder about her own decision to break off relations with her own father. What she had read about him still shocked her, but some of Fareed Hussein’s history was also shocking, if presented as black and white. Perhaps her father also had a case to make—if she let him.
But more than that, Yael felt she had finally made a friend, one she could trust. They had enjoyed each other’s company; Rina was witty and intelligent, with a wry, sharp view of the world, especially as seen by a smart, thirtyish single woman in Manhattan. Still, a shadow fell over the evenings they spent together—Yael knew that eventually she would have to mention the SG. She put it off as long as she could, but the SG was pressing her. Just as Yael had feared, Rina did not take the news well. One night, over dinner in a trendy Harlem restaurant, Yael had tentati
vely raised the topic of Rina’s father and his hopes. Rina had picked up her purse, walked out, and not spoken to Yael since. She did not respond to Yael’s e-mails, text messages, or calls. Eventually, Yael gave up. She had once seen Rina on a protest outside the UN headquarters. She considered going up to her to say hello, but when she caught Rina’s eye the SG’s daughter had looked straight through her. Yael still missed their nights out.
Yael took out her mobile phone. She scrolled through the numbers. Rina’s was still there. She called up the text message about David. Sometimes it was better to act than think too much. She added a line, and forwarded it to Rina.
Just as she pressed “SEND,” Hussein sat back down. He looked sternly at Yael before he started speaking. “Those were two interesting conversations.”
Yael brought herself back back the present, focused on the SG. “Who with?”
“First, with the FBI liaison for the Host Country Unit at the US mission.”
“What did they want to talk about?”
“You.”
*
Clairborne stared at his computer monitor and waited for his contact to come online. The two men had first met in Tehran in 1978, where Clairborne had been ostensibly sent as a cultural attaché. In reality he was a CIA officer, liaising with SAVAK, the Shah’s brutal secret police. Clairborne was training SAVAK officers in “enhanced interrogation techniques”—including electric shocks, severe beatings, and tapping lengths of wooden dowel through the ear canal into the brain—he had learned while serving in Vietnam on the Phoenix program. All the SAVAK officers were enthusiastic students, but Clairborne was especially interested in a quiet, diligent operative who had managed to penetrate the Islamic revolutionaries. Clairborne and his contact were soon trading: Clairborne supplied satellite imagery of the Iraqi army, which was preparing for war with Iran, and made regular payments into a Swiss bank account in the SAVAK agent’s name, while the SAVAK agent passed Clairborne detailed intelligence about the coming Islamic revolution.
Clairborne’s long, detailed memos to Langley, predicting the demise of the Shah and the coming Islamic revolution, were ignored. So were his recommendations that the United States cooperate with the Ayatollah Khomeini behind the scenes to build goodwill. The SAVAK officer’s predictions came true soon after Khomeini’s triumphant return. Iran declared itself an Islamic republic. That November, revolutionaries attacked the American embassy, holding fifty-two hostages for 444 days. Despite this, and all the denunciations of the Great Satan, back-channel connections between Tehran and Washington, DC, continued. Clairborne’s contact, like many of his colleagues, smoothly transitioned from SAVAK to VEVAK, its successor organization.
The two men kept in touch over the years, meeting in Beirut, Geneva, or Paris. Still working for the CIA, Clairborne continued to supply intelligence about the Iraqi military and receive detailed information on the inner workings and power struggles of the Islamic regime in return. On September 12, 2001, he had received a message that could have changed the course of modern history: in exchange for the resumption of diplomatic relations, Tehran would help the United States depose the Taliban in Afghanistan. Clairborne recommended that the offer be seriously considered, but he was brushed aside. The next day he resigned and set up the Prometheus Group.
Despite their differences, the Christian American and the Shia Muslim from Iran shared a similar belief. Clairborne and Eugene Packard called it the Rapture or the End of Days, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ: a righteous fire that would cleanse the world and deliver salvation to the true believers. For Salim Massoud, it was the appearance of the Mahdi, the redeemer of Islam. Sunni Muslims believed the Mahdi was yet to come, but for Shia Muslims the Mahdi was already on Earth, hiding until the time came to join Jesus in saving humanity. But whatever the theological nuances, both Clairborne and Massoud agreed that it was their solemn duty to accelerate Armageddon. Now everything had been set in motion. There were only three more days to wait.
Clairborne pressed a series of buttons on his keyboard. A window opened, showing a thin young man with sallow skin lying on his back in a windowless gray concrete cell and staring at the ceiling. Clairborne damped down his guilt. He had arranged for the boy to be kidnapped to give him leverage over Massoud, to keep him vulnerable and off-balance. The Iranian had never suspected that Clairborne, the very man he asked for help to find his son, was holding him prisoner. Clairborne stared more closely at the computer monitor. The boy’s eyes were empty, almost dead. Once the war had started, he would release him. He certainly would.
*
Yael looked at the SG. It was never good news to be the subject of a conversation with the FBI, especially a section of the bureau so close to home. The Host Country Affairs Section at the US mission dealt with protocol, accreditation, and immunity for foreign diplomats posted to the UN. Like embassies, foreign missions to the UN enjoyed full diplomatic immunity under US law. Diplomats accredited to the UN, and their families, also had full diplomatic immunity. While most were law-abiding citizens, a small minority took advantage of their status to break the law with impunity; there had recently been several cases of diplomats from the developing world keeping domestic staff in conditions of near slavery. Governments could waive their diplomats’ immunity and allow them to be prosecuted, but that almost never happened. Usually, the offenders were given a couple of weeks to pack their bags and return home.
Until the previous month, Yael had rarely thought about her legal protection. Within the UN, the SG and four top officials, including her, had full diplomatic immunity, which meant they could not be arrested even if they committed a crime outside UN territory. But in her brief interlude as acting secretary-general, Caroline Masters had threatened to strip Yael of her immunity and extradite her to Switzerland, where authorities wanted to question her about the man she had had drowned in Lake Geneva. Yael’s defense, that she had taken the man’s life in self-defense after he’d kidnapped her and tried to murder her, would likely prove adequate, but she had no desire to test it in a Swiss court.
Fareed Hussein had never made such threats. For the moment she was back in favor, especially after saving President Freshwater’s life, but Yael knew all that could change in an instant, depending on the vagaries of international diplomacy—and the SG’s interests. Life in the upper reaches of the UN reminded her of the accounts she had read of the courts of Roman emperors or Ottoman sultans: danger increased with proximity to power. Olivia de Souza, the SG’s personal assistant, had been hurled off a balcony on the thirty-eighth floor. Yael did not fear for her life, but she had little doubt that despite their intense, shared history, the SG would, if necessary, throw her overboard to save himself. If the Doomsday sound file was genuine he was prepared to sacrifice the lives of five hundred people. If the text message was true Hussein was also implicated in the death of her brother. Even if it was not, if she was sacked from the UN she would never be able to find out how and why David had died.
Yael felt distinctly uneasy, but she made sure not to let it show. “Anything in particular about me, or just a general chat?”
“They have received an inquiry from the NYPD about your legal status.”
Yael’s discomfort grew. Masters had also threatened to hand Yael over to the NYPD so they could investigate her part in the death of Jean-Pierre Hakizimani in the Hotel Millennium, which was a much more alarming prospect because she wouldn’t have to be extradited anywhere. She lived in New York. And also because Yael had killed him by repeatedly shocking him with a stun gun. While he was tied up, so there was no defense of self-defense.
Yael remained impassive. “OK. What did you tell them?”
“That I would talk to the NYPD to get the facts of the matter firsthand.”
“Which are?”
“The NYPD wants to issue tickets to a taxi driver called Gurdeep Patel, and two of his cousins, for dangerous driving. You were Patel’s passenger. He says that you declared that his car, and those of his cousi
ns, were part of your security detail and UN territory and were thus immune from traffic laws.”
Yael’s tension drained away. “So what if I did? I have full immunity. I was being followed. I needed to get away. To do that I needed to give them a guarantee. It seemed the simplest thing to do. Otherwise why would Gurdeep and his cousins risk it for me?”
Hussein frowned. “It is legal nonsense for you to declare three random New York taxis to be UN territory for the duration of your ride, as you well know.”
“They were not random taxis. They were helping me avoid a car that was following me. I had good reason to believe I was under threat because of my work for the UN. I had a right to ensure my security. Give me a moment, please.”
She picked up her cell phone and scrolled through the menus until she found the video clip. She pressed play and handed it to the SG. “The black SUV. It was near my apartment, then tracked me down Broadway until we got away.”
Hussein stared at the screen as the video clip played, then handed the phone back to her.
Yael watched him as she spoke. “Fareed, you can make this go away with a phone call. Please?”
The SG blinked as he answered. “This time, yes. But don’t make a habit of this. You have a bodyguard. Try using him. Anyway, we have something much more important to discuss.”
Yael leaned forward. “I’m listening.”